Firms work to kill Net congestion

Although companies have built the biggest, fastest series of
high-speed networks the world has ever seen, they've overlooked the points
where they all come together.

Despite billions of dollars invested in fiber-optic Net connections across
the country, the system still breaks down at the points where all of these
lines meet--often acting like an over-burdened freeway on-ramp at
rush hour.

But a handful of start-ups--such as hub builder Equinix and Web-caching
firms Akamai Technologies and Edgix--have come on to the scene with new
technology and ideas for eliminating these reoccurring bottlenecks.

Many of the new methods are still being tested, but analysts and Net
companies say the start-ups are addressing a critical part of keeping the
Net usable as the level of traffic soars.

"The [existing hubs] are a congested mess," says Jeanne Schaaf, a network analyst with Forrester Research. "People are looking for lots of
ways to move traffic on a network more quickly."

The success of these strategies will depend on how many Internet service
providers and content companies take advantage of these new services--but
the interest from Wall Street and potential customers, analysts say, is high.

Eliminating congestion on the public Net also can translate into dollar
signs for these new firms. Investors are throwing money at companies aiming
at repairing the Net's weak points, as seen in today's successful Akamai IPO.

Too much traffic, too few exits
One of the Internet's biggest problems is that a huge amount of data
traffic traveling along the nation's networks gets squeezed through a small
number of transfer points on its way to its final destination, analysts say.

Imagine Qwest Communications International's new high-speed networks as a four-lane freeway. If you drive in a straight line along this freeway, it's
a quick commute. But if you have to merge onto another freeway, or fight
through rush-hour traffic on a cloverleaf exit, the commute grinds to a halt.

The Internet is suffering similar problems. Even if a user has a high-speed
cable modem connected to a fiber-optic network, there are still places
along a network where an email message or other information has to travel
from one company's network to another. This is where the crunch occurs.

Much of this traffic in the United States is exchanged at one of about nine
big hubs, dubbed "Network Access Points." In 1993, the National Science
Foundation gave the rights to run these centers to a number of big
telephone companies like Sprint, Ameritech, and what is now MCI WorldCom.

With names like "MAE East," "MAE West," or "Big East," these points are the
default centers where the private networks connect. ISPs and telephone
companies also increasingly make private one-to-one arrangements to link
their networks together--a result of network overload.

"It's like if you have 50 or so companies together at a trade show and had
them set up a booth together," said Tom Nolle, president of network
consulting company CIMI. "Everyone would know that any effort they put in
would benefit their competitors, and you'd wind up with a terrible booth."

No more bottlenecks
Firms, savvy to the way the Net is run today, are planning to make subtle
changes to the way networks are connected and plan to widen or add to the
number of network "exit ramps."

Equinix has garnered the most recent attention, with initial seed funding
from Cisco Systems and Microsoft. It is also planning another high-profile
round of financing soon.

The company promises to build 35 new network hubs in the next few years,
with 12 introduced by the end of 2000. PAIX, another more established
private hub-builder owned by AboveNet, is also increasing the number of
centers it plans to build.

"The technology put in place for the original exchange points wasn't built
to take [today's] load," Jay Adelson said, Equinix's chief
technical officer.
The carriers that maintain the existing switching points also have more
incentive to keep traffic on their own networks, instead of investing in
upgrading facilities used by their competitors, Adelson noted.

Yet Equinix has taken a different look at the old connections

The old hub system simply linked ISP networks together, providing a kind of
switching station for the content traveling over those networks.

Equinix brings the content companies--and anyone else involved--into the
physical walls of a switching station. That means, for example, eBay could
hook its servers directly to a partner's search engine server a few feet
away, without the actual data transmissions--like search queries--traveling
over the Internet at large.

"This means that anybody can come in and outsource any part of their
business that they don't want to spend their resources doing themselves,"
said Al Avery, Equinix's CEO. "And they don't have to go across the
Internet's network to reach their partners."

This setup also allows players like Akamai Networks or Edgix to place their
Web caching systems next to their customers in these same facilities.

The new model, while largely indistinguishable to the average person
downloading a Web page at home, does have the potential to speed up
downloads by eliminating congestion and reducing the number of hops
between networks.

"These direct interconnections limit the number of hops that traffic goes
from start to finish," Forrester's Schaaf says. "That's a good thing."

If companies like Equinix and PAIX are successful in attracting customers,
the old network of public hubs may slowly disappear, some say.

The carriers aren't making substantial revenue by operating these centers,
and companies like MCI WorldCom and Sprint would prefer to keep traffic on
their own networks instead of helping competitors, analysts note.